He's became famous as the Irish Traveller hard man who bit off a rival’s ear but Big Fat Gypsy Wedding star Paddy Doherty is now having to learn to cry.

He's became famous as the Irish Traveller hard man who bit off a rival’s ear but Big Fat Gypsy Wedding star Paddy Doherty is now having to learn to cry.

Bareknuckle bruiser Doherty, from Queensferry, North Wales, has been cast as the protective dad of a gypsy girl who falls for an Irish American fighter in a Pierce Brosnan flick.

The tough guy, who once boasted of how he would bite off and swallow parts of the ears and noses of other travellers he tussled with, has been having acting lessons to help him cry in the movie.

He said: “I’ve been learning how to express your feelings in your face with emotions. It sounds silly, but (I’ve been learning) how to make yourself cry.”

To help him cry, tough guy Doherty, 53, thinks about the death of his 18-year-old son Patrick, who was killed in a smash in 1989.

Doherty’s nephew David, 17, and second-cousin Andrew, 21, were also killed in the accident on the East Lancs Road between Liverpool and Manchester.

To well up the reality star, who still lives on a travellers’ site with wife Roseanne, 51, recollects how he’d been swimming with his son just half an hour before the fatal smash.

“My son left me half an hour before he died and we’d been swimming together. I gave him £50 (to go to a disco) and dropped him off and within 20 minutes of leaving me he was dead.

“It messes me up in the head and I think, ‘How come I gave him £50 to go to a disco and then he died’.”

Doherty will star alongside his hero Nick Nolte in the movie – reports suggest he hunts down the 48 Hrs star and knocks him out in New York in the flick.

Doherty named 1970s mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man – where Nolte played Tom Jordache – as one of his favourite dramas starring the American actor.

The reality star, who begins work on the film next month, said: “All my life he’s been my hero – not because of who he is, but from being a child he was always fantastic wasn’t he?

“He’s a great actor Nick Nolte – fantastic. The only thing that could beat that (starring alongside Nolte) would be seeing the Queen mother.”

Before Channel 4’s My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding Doherty said he worked running a travellers’ site in Salford and doing a “bit of this and that”.

Despite being a household name Doherty has also learnt fame has its downsides – other travellers are keener than ever to get into a dust-up with him to make a name for themselves.

In January Doherty was given a suspended jail sentence after brawling outside Manchester’s PC World with his cousin Johnny Joyce, 21, amid an ongoing feud.

Doherty, currently filming a Gypsy Wedding special, said: “A couple of years ago I was alright, but now every traveller wants to fight me.

“They’re going on You Tube saying this and that because they want to get themselves put in the paper.

“If I fight anyone I’m in trouble again and I don’t want to be in trouble – I’m out of that now. There’s a big downside to it (fame), but no-one knows that.

Doherty, who has previously spoken of his delight at being able to change public attitudes towards travellers, is worried concerns over alleged “slavery” in gypsy communities might undermine his efforts.

The former Celebrity Big Brother winner, who is also learning to read, said he knew jailed slaver and Bedfordshire traveller James John, 34.

In July John was given 11 years and his wife Josie Connors, 31, four years, after a court heard they had enslaved “destitute men”.

But Doherty insisted he had no idea what John was up to and the vile treatment he meted out is not a reflection of life in gypsy communities.

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